The report was supposed to be a comprehensive and bipartisan look at former GTMO detainees, but fails at both objectives. Much of the failure is due to the majority’s insistence on releasing a public report during an election year. The majority is well aware that most of the relevant material is classified and politically sensitive. To their credit, committee staff did do a workmanlike job on the classified annex, which we recommend to all members. But the public report uses a highly problematic “methodology” in order to write ghost stories designed to scare voters. Americans deserve better.

Reports on terrorism should not further the terrorists’ goal of spreading fear. After all, terrorism is a double-barreled attack on civilization: violence is one weapon and publicity of that violence is another. Without publicity, the terrorist can never succeed. Regrettably, this report gives former GTMO detainees publicity by making them seem more numerous and dangerous than they are. Reengagers will like their image in the report.

[snip]

The report concludes that, despite the admitted improvements in the Obama Administration’s handling of detainee issues, the number of former detainees who return to terrorism will be as high or higher. This is purely speculative, and seems politically motivated. Time will tell, but the current rate of confirmed reengagement of transferees under the Obama Administration is closer to 3%, not the report’s cover graphic of 27%. The lower figure does not, however, make headlines.

I will have more on the report later. But I wanted to point out one detail about how the propaganda list of who is a “recidivist” and who isn’t changes.

In the April 2009 list leaked to ruin Obama’s efforts to close Gitmo, the Saudi former detainee Mazin Salih Musaid al-Awfi was listed second on the list of those “confirmed” to have “reengaged” in terrorism along with Said al-Shihri.

Abu Sufyam al-Asdi al-Shihri–repatriated to Saudi Arabia in November 2007, and Mazin Salih Musaid al-Alawi al-Awfi–repatriated to Saudi Arabia in July 2007. On 24 January, a 19-minute video was released wherein al-Shihri and al-Awfi announced their leadership within the newly established al-Qaida in Arabian Peninsula.

But in this week’s list, al-Shihri appears all by himself (though still second on the list).

Said al-Shihri 17 (ISN 372) was transferred in November 2007 to the Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Centre for Care and Counseling (also known as Care) in Saudi Arabia.18 This is an initiative, operated by the Saudi government, meant to rehabilitate those believed to be terrorists.19 However, after completing the portion of the program requiring him to reside at the Care facility, al-Shihri left Saudi Arabia for Yemen despite putatively being barred from foreign travel. In addition to raising questions about the Saudi government’s ability to enforce travel restrictions on former detainees, al-Shihri’s arrival in Yemen allowed him and another former GTMO detainee to assume leadership of the newly established al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).20 They released a video announcing their roles.21 [my emphasis]

The report invokes al-Awfi, but don’t name him or explain why they don’t consider him among those “confirmed” to have returned to extremism.

Which means among the former detainees whose story fearmongers used in 2009 to argue against closing Gitmo was, probably, a double agent collecting intelligence on what became AQAP.

For all we know, the Subcommittee may be doing the same again now–claiming people have “returned to action” when they haven’t, exactly. In fact, it’s not even clear they know for sure that their “returned fighters” are what they claim. The folks who might know best–the CIA–refused to cooperate with this report.

The committee believes the Central Intelligence Agency may have been able to provide additional insight on reengagement issues and resolve factual discrepancies identified during meetings with U.S. officials abroad. Headquarters representatives from the CIA declined requests, made at the behest of the subcommittee chairman and ranking member, to meet with staff. This impaired the committee’s efforts to evaluate fully this topic.

Which highlights how brilliant it was to recruit double agents at Gitmo (if you want to sustain the fear of terrorism). If successful, recruits might serve double duty, both infiltrating al Qaeda and providing intelligence, and serving as (apparently false) examples of how dangerous this foe really is.

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https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2012-02-10 15:50:392012-02-10 16:14:24Exploitation: How a "Recidivist" became a Double Agent

Let’s also remember that some of the recidivism is due to the radicalization imparted at GTMO, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram even if the particular detainees [Rummy’s “worst of the worst”] were never in those locations. They have internet. And Bush let over 80% of them go without any real oversight, it seems, aside from his buddies in Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 9/11/01 hijackers as well as OBL [who was still on the loose]. What could possibly go wrong?

I’m not sure how Bush did better than Obama on this. The distrust of the CIA isn’t surprising to me, after all they were blamed for 9/11/01 by the Bush WH, had their agents outed by Bush [and don’t think for a minute Cheney didn’t cover his ass], subjected to waves of Gosslings with poor tradecraft, and on the hot seat for various allegedly illegal domestic surveillance ops, notably in NYC, probably with a few burrowed Bushies involved. We won’t know for sure, my take is that the CIA is very dysfunctional and full of dissension and not effective now.

So, what’s AQAP done lately aside from being drone fodder? Nothing I’ve seen in the press. But the AQAP are necessary to be the bogeyman, just as OBL was back in the Bush WH, whenever they needed a poll boost or cover for another restriction on our rights.

@Benjamin Franklin: That had me a bit unnerved this morning. I wanted to grab a CIA map to paste into my Balochistan post and I was afraid CIA had decided not to let me onto their site. I guess I was being a bit to paranoid…